SEO was never supposed to be a buzzword. Now it’s touted as the One True Way to level up page ranking and has reached such a saturation point that everyone claims to be an SEO “expert” when very often they are working with the same tools as DIYers. The market is highly competitive, with numerous agencies all out for an ever-shrinking piece of the pie. Large companies can afford an in-house marketing department, medium-sized companies can outsource, so where does that leave small businesses?
Flying Blind
Unfortunately, there are few transparent pricing models that let a small company on a tight budget know what to expect from an SEO company and how much they’ll pay for it. Moreover, most business owners have no idea what an SEO specialist does or what areas they work in to improve the search results for small business. When you have a small business, you want to know costs up front, how much every month, and what services make the package worth the cost.
Affordable SEO Service with Package Pricing
What should a business look for in an affordable SEO service that offers package pricing? Quite a lot. Package pricing should not mean second-class service. Packages should include the following:
- Technical analysis of the company website.
- Examination of online presence.
- Comparison of the company website to competitor’s websites.
- Optimizing off-page content by building links and citations.
- Identify gaps between competitors and the company in terms of website and online presence, and presentation of a plan to close those gaps.
- Study and reporting of the customer behavior including customer vocabulary analysis followed with reporting of activity and results.
- Content development and placement.
- Keeping abreast of major search engine algorithm updates.
- Integration with digital marketing.
And What to Avoid at All Costs
As with all competitive industries, there are going to be scammers. In the case of SEO, these scammers are called “black hats” and they will are you in with promises of instant results. However, the company in question will never explain how they plan to achieve these results, much less put it in writing. Their sole focus is on cost while making big promises, not explaining trade-offs, and at times they may be absolutely unable to explain how search engine algorithms work.